[Book Talk] The Upsides of a Book Budget

17:40 Cilla 4 Comments



If you've been here before, you may know that I have been trying to stick to a book-buying ban of sort. I set myself a book budget of $100 for the year. I was literally the only one who was optimistic about this goal; even my mother didn't think I'd be able to do it! Unfortunately for my wallet, she was right, but not by too much! My spending on books for 2016, so far, stands at $200. Not bad for someone who can easily spend triple that amount.

Apart from skepticism, the general reaction from other book lovers when I say 'I'm on a book buying ban' is incredulity. Why would anyone deny themselves books?! It is bad for your health. In a way, this is true. The amount of times I wandered into a bookshop only to browse longingly and exit empty-handed is depressing. I would love to have unlimited money and buy all the books. Alas, I do not.

A couple of good things have come out of holding myself to a budget though!

4 comments:

Thanks for reading! It makes my day to hear your thoughts and I will respond asap. :)

[Match Made in the Pages] Neville Takes Prim On A Date

18:30 Cilla 8 Comments


Hey there! I hope you're all having a good start to your week, and welcome back to Match Made in the Pages. This feature is the collaborative effort of Team Periwinkle as part of #BBCP2016. In Part 1, I asked Neville Longbottom some questions in an effort to set up his online dating profile and left it up to you guys to pick his date!

The suggestions were really fantastic, and one in particular sparked my imagination. So, what would it be like if Neville Longbottom and Primrose Everdeen went on a date? I think it would go something like this:

8 comments:

Thanks for reading! It makes my day to hear your thoughts and I will respond asap. :)

[Review] Yellow by Megan Jacobson

19:15 Cilla 4 Comments

Title: Yellow
Author: Megan Jacobson
Publisher: Penguin Teen Australia
Source: Bought
Synopsis: If fourteen-year-old Kirra is having a mid-life crisis now, then it doesn't bode well for her life expectancy. Her so-called friends bully her, whatever semblance of a mother she had has been drowned at the bottom of a gin bottle ever since her dad left them for another woman, and now a teenage ghost is speaking to her through a broken phone booth. Kirra and the ghost make a pact. She'll prove who murdered him almost twenty years ago if he does three things for her. He makes her popular, he gets her parents back together, and he doesn't haunt her. Things aren't so simple however, and Kirra realises that people can be haunted in more ways than one.



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Review: 
"Because you don't get to choose your parents, and at some point you realise that maybe your parents just aren't able to parent very well, but we exist, and the only choice we've got in the whole situation is whether we're gonna love them anyway. It's as simple and messy and complicated as that."
Yellow is one of the four books I bought at the YA Squad event in Melbourne, and it was the one I was looking forward to the most. It's not because of the cover (though it is gorgeous) or the premise (though phone calls from a ghost sounds pretty cool). It's because of what Megan Jacobson said about the main character being a quiet girl.

4 comments:

Thanks for reading! It makes my day to hear your thoughts and I will respond asap. :)

[Match Made in the Pages] Set Neville Longbottom Up on A Blind Date!

18:01 Cilla 6 Comments


Welcome to the first installment to BBCP Team Periwinkle's project: Match Made in the Pages! Over the next two weeks, we want to send some of our favourite characters on a blind date. It's a blind date for two reasons: we'd like you to set them up, with a character from a universe other than theirs! Have a read of their dating profiles, leave a comment with your thought on who they should go on a date with, then come back next week to see how we imagine that date would go!

Let's kick things off with the boy who saved Hogwarts - Neville Longbottom. Here is how I think he'd go if he had to answer questions for a brief online dating profile as an 18 year old (let's pretend he has access the internet somehow):

6 comments:

Thanks for reading! It makes my day to hear your thoughts and I will respond asap. :)

[Rewind] July 2016

13:46 Cilla 7 Comments



July was busy, as always. My attention drifted further away from this blog as I focused on other things. For once, it wasn't all about school! 

I spent some time working on my writing in July. I reached my goal of 12,000 words for Camp NaNo. While I'm sure my draft needs a lot of editing, I'm further into this story than I have ever been, and I'm excited about it! I also got a piece published at The Regal Fox - read it here and read the other fantastic pieces as well while you're there. I'm hoping I can keep this up, and one day I'll actually complete a manuscript.

For now, let's focus on the books that are actually published!

7 comments:

Thanks for reading! It makes my day to hear your thoughts and I will respond asap. :)